1. Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relates to a wireless communication system; and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for supporting access in a wireless communication system, which support access to effectively use multiple channels in a wireless communication system having multiple nodes such that multiple users communicate through the multiple nodes.
2. Description of Related Art
In a next-generation communication system, studies are actively conducted to provide users with high-speed service with various qualities of service (hereinafter, referred to as QoS). In particular, studies on a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) system which is an example of a wireless communication system are actively conducted through the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard. The current WLAN system performs communication using only channel with a single antenna. Recently, studies have been conducted to apply multiple antennas to the IEEE 802.11 system. To improve the performance of the wireless communication system, various schemes for effectively using resources, for example, channels, time, space and so on have been proposed.
The current WLAN system has a network environment in which a plurality of users have a plurality of access nodes such that the users may effectively use a limited channel to receive a service at a high speed. In the WLAN system, however, a time in which a channel is not used frequency occurs depending on the number of users allocated to the channel and the amount or form of traffic. Accordingly, the utilization efficiency of the limited channel decreases. To solve such a problem, various schemes are considered to perform communication by effectively using a limited channel through a multi-channel Media Access Control (hereinafter, referred to as MAC) technology. However, specific schemes have not yet been proposed.
Therefore, there is demand for a specific access scheme which effectively uses multiple channels in a network environment in which a plurality of users have a plurality of connection nodes in the WLAN system such that the respective users perform communications through the plurality of access nodes.